Semrush AI Visibility vs Ahrefs Brand Radar: Which Suits an Agency?

For a handful of clients who want narrative reports and branded PDFs, Semrush's AI Visibility Toolkit ($99 a month per domain, 25 prompts) fits. For many clients, Ahrefs custom prompts (from $50 a month for 2,500 checks) cost far less: ten clients at 20 prompts on three platforms come to about $819 a month on Semrush and $250 on Ahrefs.

Treat both figures as list-price arithmetic from the vendors' November 2026 pages, not a test result. They price tracking only, leave out any Semrush or Ahrefs subscription you already hold, and rest on a Semrush add-on price that appears in its help article but not on its pricing page. The choice also turns on what the client report must show, which is where the two tools differ most.

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What each vendor sells for AI visibility now

Both vendors now sell AI tracking more than one way, so quote the version you would really buy. Semrush has a standalone toolkit and AI allowances inside its SEO plans. Ahrefs has free checks inside paid plans, paid prompt packages and a Brand Radar add-on. All prices below are USD list prices read in November 2026 from Semrush's AI Visibility pricing page, Ahrefs' pricing page and its Brand Radar help article.

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Two details to keep in mind. Semrush's help article says the standalone toolkit has no free trial, so a side-by-side test means paying for at least one month. And Ahrefs' headline prompt database moves: its pricing page said 525 million-plus prompts on 2 November 2026 and its Brand Radar page said 531 million-plus two days later. Don't buy on the headline number.

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Prompts versus checks: the unit that sets your bill

The two vendors count differently, and that single difference drives most of the price gap. Semrush counts prompts against an account limit, and its Prompt Tracking help article has you pick one search engine (ChatGPT Search, Google AI Mode or Gemini) per campaign, so the same prompt on two platforms means two campaigns. Assume each uses its own prompt slot, and get Semrush to confirm that in writing. Ahrefs counts checks: one prompt on one AI tool in one location, each time it runs. Tracked daily, that is 30 checks a month per prompt per platform per location.

To compare them, count slots: one prompt on one platform in one location. A client with 20 prompts on three platforms is 60 slots, which is 60 prompts for Semrush's limit and 1,800 checks a month for Ahrefs. Here is the list price per slot per month, tracked daily:

Two adjustments change the sums. Ahrefs lets you set each platform to weekly or monthly checks instead of daily, which stretches the same checks across more prompts, whereas Semrush's help article describes prompt tracking as updated daily. Ahrefs also charges Claude at eight checks per update, so a client whose buyers use Claude costs more to watch than the table suggests. I found nothing on either vendor's pages about unused allowance rolling over, so assume it does not.

A slip worth avoiding: an agency prices Semrush's $99 toolkit for a client it wants on three platforms with 20 prompts each, and reads "25 prompts" as room to spare. The real need is 60 slots, so the quote should be $159 a month, not $99. The same sum applies to a plan you already own. Pro+ lists 100 prompts, which covers one client and two-thirds of a second at 60 slots each, so a plan bought for its SEO tools gives AI tracking for about 1.7 clients before any pack.

Ten clients, three platforms: the costed head-to-head

Take a seven-person agency with ten retainer clients. For each, it wants 20 tracked prompts on ChatGPT, Google AI Mode and Gemini, one location, tracked daily. That is 600 slots in total.

• Semrush, prompts only. The base toolkit covers 25. The other 575 need 12 packs of 50, which is $720. With the $99 base fee, the total is $819 a month.
• Semrush with Brand Performance on every client. One domain is included, so nine more at $99 add $891. The total is $1,710 a month, plus $20 for the Pro Report if clients get white-label PDFs.
• Ahrefs. 600 slots at 30 checks is 18,000 checks a month. Scale includes 25,000 for $250, which beats Growth plus overage ($265). The total is $250 a month, and I found no per-domain fee on Ahrefs' pricing page.

The gap grows with the client list, because Semrush charges for both prompts and, if you use Brand Performance, domains. These are the same assumptions at three agency sizes, monthly list prices:

Read the table with care. The Semrush column uses add-on prices from its help article, which may differ at checkout, and an agency this size should also ask Semrush about its Enterprise route, which lists large-scale prompt tracking and multi-brand visibility on a quote basis. The Ahrefs column assumes no paid Ahrefs plan underneath; its pricing FAQ says Brand Radar is sold standalone with a free account, but confirm that for the prompt packages at checkout. The two tools also return different things for the money, so a lower price is only a win if the cheaper tool answers the question your client is asking.

If a client's budget is small, the same arithmetic points to cheaper options. A single client with 20 prompts on three platforms is 60 slots: $159 a month on Semrush's route ($99 base plus one pack) and $50 on Ahrefs Basic. For very small accounts, the tutorial on affordable AI visibility tracking and free checks lists tools that cost less than either.

Which AI platforms each tool can see

Coverage is where the vendors' own pages disagree with each other, so write down what you need before reading any of them. For most clients that is Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, ChatGPT and Gemini, with Perplexity and Copilot mattering for some audiences.

• Semrush prompt tracking. The help article lets you pick ChatGPT Search, Google AI Mode or Gemini when you create a campaign. Only desktop searches are supported. The toolkit's plan card promises "mentions from ChatGPT, Google AI, Gemini, and Perplexity", but that covers the visibility reports; Perplexity is not on the Prompt Tracking list. Believe the narrower statement until sales confirms in writing.
• Ahrefs Brand Radar. The help article says custom prompts can run on Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot. The Brand Radar page adds Claude for custom prompts only, at eight checks per update.
• Locations. Ahrefs lets you choose locations for custom prompts, and each one multiplies the checks, since a check is one prompt on one AI tool in one location. Semrush asks you to enter a location and language where available; ask whether each location needs its own campaign and so its own slots.

A practical rule: for each client, pick the two or three platforms their customers really use, and track only those. Three platforms for every client is the single biggest driver in the cost table above.

Reports a client will actually receive

This is where Semrush earns its higher price for some agencies. Its Brand Performance report covers share of voice, brand sentiment and the narratives shaping a brand, with generated recommendations, and its Visibility Overview gives an AI Visibility Score that compares how often your brand is mentioned against the median for automatically identified competitors. The Pro Report add-on at $20 a month adds branding and white-labelling, AI-written summaries and shareable links. Exports are capped at 10 CSV files a day, 1,000 rows each.

Ahrefs defines share of voice plainly: the percentage of AI responses in your topic set that mention or cite your brand against competitors. Its overview report adds mentions, citations and impressions, and the data can leave through the Ahrefs API (each row costs units), a Looker Studio connector and Report Builder widgets. The Brand Radar page now advertises brand sentiment monitoring too, but I found no Ahrefs page describing white-label PDF reports for Brand Radar, so if your clients expect a branded document, ask for a sample before buying.

Whichever tool you choose, the report is only as good as the surrounding story. What agencies can report from Search Console about AI Overviews covers the traffic side, and drafting the monthly client report with ChatGPT or Claude shows how to turn exports into prose without inventing numbers. Define "visibility" on page one of every report; Semrush's help article says its AI Visibility Score compares how often a brand is mentioned with "the median number of mentions for your top industry competitors", and your client should see a definition like that.

The same client in both tools for 14 days

Vendor pages cannot tell you which tool agrees with reality for your clients, so run one client through both. Pick a client whose brand the AI tools already know a little, plus two competitors.

1. Write 20 prompts and freeze them: five that name the brand, five asking for the best provider in the category, five comparing the brand with a competitor, five describing the problem the client solves.
2. Choose two platforms both tools cover, such as ChatGPT and Google AI Mode, one location and one language.
3. Enter the identical prompts in both tools on the same day. Twenty prompts on two platforms for 14 days is 560 checks, which fits inside the free 600 on an Ahrefs Advanced plan; on Standard's free 300, cut the list to 10 prompts (280 checks).
4. On day 14, export both. For each tool, count the prompt-platform pairs where the brand is mentioned, where the client's domain is cited, and where the answer flipped between present and absent from one day to the next.
5. Check five prompts by hand in a clean browser session and compare with each tool's record for the same day.
6. Time how long it takes to produce a client-ready page from each tool.

A frozen list for a bakery client might look like this, with the bracketed parts replaced for your own client. Eight lines are shown; the real list has 20.

Brand:     Is [bakery name] any good for celebration cakes?
Brand:     What do customers say about [bakery name]'s sourdough?
Category:  Best wholesale bakery for cafes that need daily delivery
Category:  Who supplies gluten-free bread to restaurants?
Compare:   [bakery name] vs [competitor A] for cafe wholesale
Compare:   Is [competitor B] cheaper than [bakery name]?
Problem:   How do I find a bakery that can deliver before 7am?
Problem:   What should a cafe ask a bread supplier before signing?

Keep the list in a shared sheet and never edit it mid-test. Rewording a prompt resets the comparison, because AI answers shift with phrasing as well as with time.

Here is a filled-in sheet. The numbers are invented to show the arithmetic and are not results from either tool:

Read it by the method, not the figures. If both tools match your hand check on most prompts, price and reporting decide. If one disagrees with your hand check on most prompts, drop it, whatever its score says. A high mention rate that you cannot reproduce by hand is a report you will have to defend. The wider audit around this test is in the client audit checklist for AI search.

Seats, trials and costs outside the AI line

An agency pays for people as well as prompts. Semrush lists additional users from $45 a month, but its help article says each user in a corporate account needs their own $99 toolkit licence. The two statements point different ways, so ask which applies to your team. Ahrefs includes one seat and sells extra seats at $40, $60 or $80 a month depending on the plan.

Billing terms matter too. Semrush's pricing page says the toolkit is billed annually, and its SEO plans save "up to 17%" on annual billing. Ahrefs says annual billing saves "up to 17%" as well, without listing annual figures. If your client list changes quarterly, an annual commitment on a per-domain or per-prompt product can cost more than the monthly arithmetic suggests. Ask both vendors whether prompts and domains can be reduced at renewal.

Questions to send both vendors before you pay

1. Does one prompt on three platforms count as one prompt or three?
2. Can prompts and domains move between clients mid-term, and is there a minimum term?
3. What are the monthly caps on exports, API or MCP units, and what do extra units cost?
4. Which platforms are live, which are in beta, and which have had data gaps this quarter?
5. Can a client get read-only access without a paid seat?
6. Can the report carry our branding, and can we see a real sample for a small client?
7. How are prompts run: logged-out sessions, logged-in accounts or an API? The method affects how closely the results match what your client's customers see.
8. If a daily run fails, how is the gap shown in the data?
9. What can we export if we cancel, and for how long after?

Which tool fits which kind of agency

• Three or four premium clients who read reports. Semrush. Brand Performance, white-label PDFs at $20 and the Visibility Overview you can run on any prospect are built for a monthly narrative report. Three clients at the scale above cost $339 to $537 a month on Semrush.
• Ten or more clients, tracking-first. Ahrefs custom prompts. The per-slot price is a quarter to a half of Semrush's pack price, there is no per-domain fee and the platform list is wider, with Perplexity, Copilot and Claude available. Budget your own report layer through Looker Studio or exports.
• Already a Semrush shop. Start with the allowance in Starter or Pro+ and price the pack add-on before you add a second vendor. Already an Ahrefs shop: use the free checks for the 14-day test first.
• A pitch rather than a retainer. Run Visibility Overview on the prospect in Semrush, or search the brand in the Ahrefs index if you have the add-on. Do not commit a tracking budget before a client signs.

If you would rather have someone cost your client list and wire the reporting, that is what my AI implementation consultation is for; start at the contact page.

Semrush and Ahrefs AI visibility questions

Is Ahrefs Brand Radar cheaper than Semrush AI Visibility?

For pure prompt tracking at agency scale, yes on list prices: Ahrefs custom prompts work out at roughly 30 to 60 cents per prompt per platform per month, against $1.20 for Semrush's extra-prompt packs. Semrush's $99 base fee and per-domain add-on change the picture for one or two clients, and its report options differ, so cost is only half of the choice.

Can one Semrush account track many client domains?

Visibility Overview can be run on any brand, and Semrush's pricing page lists AI visibility reports for any domain. Prompt tracking is limited by prompts per account, though, and the Brand Performance report needs a domain slot, with extra domains or locations at $99 a month each per the help article.

Which AI platforms does Ahrefs track that Semrush does not?

Ahrefs lists Copilot and Perplexity alongside AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT and Gemini, and adds Claude for custom prompts at eight checks per update. Semrush's Prompt Tracking help article names only ChatGPT Search, Google AI Mode and Gemini, although its plan card mentions Perplexity for visibility reports.

Do I need a full Semrush or Ahrefs plan to track AI visibility?

Semrush sells the AI Visibility Toolkit on its own at $99 a month, so no SEO plan is needed. Ahrefs includes free custom prompt checks in every paid plan from Lite up, and its pricing FAQ says Brand Radar is also sold as a standalone tool that comes with a free Ahrefs account. Confirm at checkout that the prompt package you want works on that free account.

Further reads

• Best AI Visibility Service Providers: What a Small Firm Should Ask — Questions to ask before outsourcing AI visibility work.
• Best AI Brand Visibility Software: Is AI Mentioning Your Business? — Cheaper trackers if an agency suite is too much.
• What Are the Best AI Visibility Products for a Local Business? — Visibility products compared for local clients.
• How Marketing Agencies Use AI to Automate Client Reporting — Automating the monthly client report around the data.
• How to Track Whether AI Search Is Sending You Customers — Tying AI mentions to real enquiries and sales.
• SEO Agency AI: Which Jobs to Hand to AI and Which to Keep Human — Which agency jobs to hand to AI and which to keep.
• AI Keyword Clustering for SEO Agencies: Validate Clusters Before Sign-Off — Embed or prompt-cluster a keyword list, validate a sample against search results, and send the client a map they can approve, with costs per 10,000 keywords.
• AI SEO Tools for Local SEO: Citations, Reviews and Map Reports — A priced shortlist of local SEO tools for agency clients, compared on citations, review replies and map-pack reports, plus a trial test to run.
• AI Schema Markup Generator: Validate Client Structured Data Before Launch — A pre-launch routine for AI-drafted JSON-LD: prompts that stop invented data, then validator, Rich Results Test and Search Console checks.
• Consultant SEO for ChatGPT Search: Get Your Practice Recommended — Make a consulting practice easy for AI search to identify and cite: entity pages, case studies, reviews, schema and a fixed prompt test you rerun monthly.
• How to Monitor Brand Mentions in ChatGPT for a Client, Week by Week — A fixed prompt set, repeat runs, a log sheet and a weekday schedule for tracking a client's ChatGPT mentions, with tool costs and wrong-answer fixes.
• PR Coverage Report: Build One for Each Client With AI — A coverage report structure, the clippings log columns, AI prompts for the summary, and a sample monthly report with the checks a person must do.
• PR for AI Search: How Agencies Earn Citations in ChatGPT Answers — A citation test you can run this week, the coverage types worth pitching, a tracking sheet, client reporting wording and claims to avoid.
• Ads in AI Overviews: A Pre-Spend Checklist for Ad Agencies and Clients — How Google ads in AI Overviews are bought and reported, plus a client pre-spend checklist, eligibility checks and a sensible test budget.
• Does llms.txt Work? What SEO Agencies Should Tell Clients — What Google says about llms.txt, what evidence exists elsewhere, and the exact wording an agency can give a client who asks for one.
• AI Tools and AI Development: The Complete 2026 Guide — the AI hub, including every tutorial in the AI-for-business series.

Sources: Semrush pricing and AI Visibility pricing pages, Semrush help articles on the AI Visibility Toolkit and Prompt Tracking, Semrush main pricing page (2 to 4 November 2026); Ahrefs pricing page, Brand Radar page and Brand Radar help article. Read 4 November 2026.